Pilgermann

by Russell Hoban

He climbs a ladder to reach another man's wife and gives himself up to her beauty, but then Pilgermann descends into a mob of peasants inspired by the Pope to shed the blood of Jews. Alone on the cobblestones, mutilated and unmanned, he cries out to Israel, to the Lord his God, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He is answered instead by Jesus Christ: 'I'm the one you talk to from now on.' Every day is the Day of Reckoning and the judgement Christ brings is the start of straight action. Pilgermann hears a voice from within and becomes a pilgrim. Through time and war and Death itself, he makes his way along the road to Jerusalem, struggling to find God in the horror that surrounds him.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Religion, Literary Fiction, Novels, 20th Century

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Russell Conwell Hoban was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London, England, from 1969 until his death. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me Pilgermann turned out to be a real discovery – I never suspected that it would possess such intellectual and spiritual profundity and be so masterfully written.
Pilgermann, long dead – a spirit consisting of waves and particles – contemplates the vicissitudes of being…

As far as I could see, the will of God was simply that everything possible would indeed be possible. Within that limitation the choice was ours, the reckoning His. And He was in us, one couldn’t get away from Him, that was the Fire of it, that was the Garden of it, at the centre of every soul and contiguous with infinity. The possibilities of choice were beyond all calculation and the probability of wrong choice so high as to be almost a certainty. Only God could think of such a game, and only humans would bother to play it.

If Dante Alighieri had once fashioned The Divine Comedy then Russell Hoban created a divine black comedy…

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but why would a church want the head of Pontius Pilate?’
‘How could they not want him?’ she says. ‘What kind of relics have they got? They’ve got Christ’s foreskin and Mary’s afterbirth and three hairs from Joseph’s arse but what about the man who made Christianity possible? What if Pilate hadn’t washed his hands? What if he’d turned Jesus loose and let him go on preaching, what then, hey?’

And the mystical one as well…

Sometimes I manifest myself as an owl painted by Bosch and in this way I fly through the skies of his paintings and observe what is happening.

And the metaphysical one too…

While humankind exists there can only be the rotation of God’s impossible requirements and humankind’s repeated failures. Indeed, what is God but an impossible requirement? Any possible requirement would not be God.

There are three great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And there are three great gods: Yahweh, Holy Trinity and Allah. They all are preaching peace but crying for blood…

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes you just have an affinity for an author and it seems that they can do no wrong in your eyes; that's how it is with me and Russell Hoban. I've read four of his novels so far, and while they've all been amazing works in their own way, Pilgermann might be my favorite. A less "difficult" read than Riddley Walker, but certainly no less allusive and filled with meaning. A re-read will be necessary for me to feel like I've extracted anywhere near enough value out of the words to be worthy of reading them. Even then I feel certain that I'll inevitably fall short, as more confidently plunging into the depths forged by Hoban will only reveal further depths that were previously undetected. It doesn't give up its riches easily, but that only makes each nugget of wisdom dug up, each "connexion" made, feel all the more rewarding.

This is ostensibly an historical novel, and it has elements of being a fantasy novel, but what it is, ultimately, is a meditation on life, death, God, man, infinity, and beyond. I mention it in the same breath as Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers because in my mind they are of a piece; beautiful, philosophical,meditative works informed by Judeo-Christian arcana and mythology, revolving around the idea of time as a wheel, history as a circle that keeps repeating itself. They're both stunning; Pilgermann just has the advantage of being about 1,250 pages shorter. But read 'em both.

[Fionnuala]

I'd like to say that I understood everything that Russell Hoban was saying in this macabre life/death story about a Jewish pilgrim travelling to Jerusalem via Antioch in the last decade of the eleventh century but no, I'm afraid some of it was just too complex. However it was an amazing reading experience and I understood enough to admire the originality of this allegorical tale and to appreciate how creatively Hoban examines such thorny issues as antisemitism, death, infinity, and the nature of God.

[Ian Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favourite novel. Russell Hoban has better known books (like "Riddley Walker") but this is the best one I have read. His prose is poetic, and patterned throughout the novel. The story is told by the titular Pilgermann, a soul or ghost or collection of memories flitting about through time. He tells the story of his life, while occasionally taking time aside to visit the dream of a Pope or a painting. He was a Jew, who after sleeping with a married woman is ambushed by Christians and castrated. In his agony he sees Jesus, which distresses him because he is Jewish. From there he embarks on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, gathering an entourage of ghosts following him around, until he ends up in Antioch when it comes under siege during a crusade. Religious themes permeate the novel, with much discussion of the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Absolutely recommended.

[Sarah]

Okay, Russell. You win.

You baited me with your genius writing and then used that genius to write about maggoty corpses, icky sex, and icky maggoty corpse sex until I just couldn't stand it anymore. I made it to about page 70. Well played, my friend. Well played, indeed.

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dazzling often bewildering epic tale that takes place around the year 1097. Pilgermann is a young Jew who is castrated by a group of Christians. Upon his recovery he has a visionary meeting with Christ which sets him off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In his travels he comes across a bizarre array of characters that are absolutely surreal until he takes a boat and is captured by pirates. He is sold into slavery to a Muslim but is able to buy his own freedom and becomes the Muslims companion. The book then turns to the Crusades and exposes, for me, the insanity of religious zealots and their murderous behavior. The writing was incredible and had numerous profound passages of which I especially liked the following:

"What a ponderous labour is war, what preparations must be made years and years before the first blow is struck! Decades before the first battle must the first engines of war be brought into play: the first engines of war are men and women, they the hammer and the anvil that in the heat of their action make soldiers. In order that the dead may be heaped on the walls and roofs and in the streets and houses of Jerusalem in 1099 there must be heavy coupling from about 1060 onwards among Christians and Muslims both. For the making of each soldier must a man and a woman labour in their lust, for the making of each soldier must an egg and a sperm conjoin to write their word of flesh, must a woman carry that word for nine months until her great grown belly fulfils its term and is delivered of a man child. Then must the boy be given suck, must he be kept alive to grow strong and active, must he be led safely past the ills of infancy and the perils of childhood to the day when he can take in his hands the weapons of war and go out to the place of killing."

This book is completely different from Riddley Walker but just as good.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of Russell Hoban but I couldn’t finish this one. It’s way, way out there. It was published in the early 80s but feels like something that could have been written twenty years prior in a haze of either spiritual or pharmaceutical intoxication, or both. The author describes it as a kind of sequel to his brilliant ‘Riddley Walker’, but I found it hard to make too many comparisons between the two.

The plot, if it can be said to exist, follows a jew named Pilgermann who is thrown to an anti-semitic mob after an illicit tryst with the wife of a rich merchant. He is castrated and enters a state of wandering semi-death, and finds himself a pilgrim on the road to Jerusalem. The result is a combination between a serious meditation of religion, time and history, and a kind of picaresque road novel which approximates Henry Fielding via Brueghel. It’s really weird, and not (I think) entirely successful.

But Hoban remains a good writer even when I can’t fully appreciate what he’s doing, and there are flashes of brilliance:

‘When one is a child, when one is young, when one has not yet reached the age of recognition, one thinks that the world is strong, that the strength of God is endless and unchanging. But after the thing has happened--whatever that thing might be--that brings recognition, then one knows irrevocably how very fragile is the world, how very, very fragile; it is like one of those ideas that one has in dreams: so clear and so self-explaining are they that we make no special effort to remember. Then of course they vanish as we wake and there is nothing there but the awareness that something very clear has altogether vanished.’

[Veronica]

I seem to have lost this book, so I'm marking it unfinished. To tell the truth, although I love Russell Hoban's work and wouldn't want to discourage anyone from reading his other books, I was having a hard time with it. If I do find it again, I'll skip over the wodge of medieval Jewish theology I was stuck on and try to pick up the story later. Yes, it is very weird even by Hoban standards. The verbal equivalent of a Hieronymous Bosch painting.

[ttttooo”””’mmmmmm · Rating 3 out of 5]

i would love to give this book a higher rating, but i fear it started off quite confusing and incomprehensible - only when pilgermann continued his journey on the ship did i feel like the book was going somewhere.
the biblical quotes used seemed relevant and the overall style of writing was fitting for the kind of novel this is. i wish there were more elements to the story, because it seemed like a long text for one or two relatively simple points that were trying to be made.
all in all, i‘d say it’s a hard to enjoy book, which really worked once i put in the effort to understand it more.

[Sonali V · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a glorious read. The beginning was difficult to digest with all the horrors, the graphic descriptions of gore and violence that human bodies were subjected to, so much so that I almost decided to stop reading. Just because it was Hoban I persisted however and I was royally rewarded. It made me go down the rabbit holes of Google and YouTube which I certainly enjoyed. It made me wish to visit Antioch /Antakya though I know the reality will probably be far removed from the book and what my imagination has made of it. Loved it.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part historical fiction, part fable, part meditation on the human condition and the nature of God and reality _Pilgermann_ is fully itself and ultimately sui generis. While hard to define I can at least say that it is certainly one of the most philosophical novels I have come across.

The story is told by the titular Pilgermann, the nom de plume adopted by what might most conveniently be called a ghost, but that is perhaps more appropriately considered a waveform entity made up of particles that once comprised a living human as it looks back on its life (what it can remember of it) from the point of view of something approximating eternity. This is Hoban, so we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re thrown into the deep end and it is chock full of weirdness. The plot, such as it is, revolves around several catastrophic events the entity currently known as Pilgermann experienced in 1096 and follows his subsequent pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the strange and apocalyptic events that follow.

Pilgermann’s adventures are filled with sex, ghosts, gruesome death, meditations on art (particularly religious art, which looms large in the tale, whether it be the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch or the carvings of the Naumberg master), the existence of God (as both "He" and "It") and ultimately the search for meaning in life. So, kind of the whole enchilada I guess.

The paradox of existence is central to the tale. Motion and stillness. Potentiality and actuality. Fate and free will. Multiplicity and unity. All of these contrary relationships are considered as Pilgermann ruminates on the nature of Life (both as a lived human experience and an existential reality beyond our normal perceptions). It is largely a novel about duality, the yin and yang that underlie the fabric of reality that can perhaps be summed up as the necessity of opposites: “It is in the rotation of Eden and gehinnom that we feel the cosmic dance that is the motion of the universe, and in the play of these energies come punishment and reward.”

This sounds pretty heavy, and it is, but this is Russell Hoban we’re talking about so there is plenty of humour, bawdiness, and humanity to leaven the tale (not to mention more than its fair share of grotesquerie and grisly violence). The high and the low combine to form the pattern of life and farce mixes with tragedy: the ghosts of talking dead bears and lustful slaughtered sows who tread the pilgrim road to Jerusalem with our narrator side by side with the wholesale tragedy of pogroms and genocide in the name of one’s religion. Antisemitism also looms large as a theme as does the general violence with which any sufficiently differentiated groups of humans seem to meet each other throughout the annals of history. Yet within the long view of eternity from which Pilgermann views the story of his life there are no easy answers or obvious and clear-cut black and white answers. All three of “the faiths of the book” are shown in their problematic interrelations and the final ‘rightness’ of one over the other is never finally arrived at.

Really there is so much to chew on in this slim novel that I’m at a bit of a loss. What about the questions of fate and free-will? Fate and necessity appear to win out in that debate, though the potentiality of all possible actions still lies beneath the surface of the actual and is perhaps no less real than it…so who knows? The future is ever growing from the seeds of the past following an inevitable pattern woven into the fabric of the universe, but how much of this inevitability is pre-ordained, and how much of it is the result of our own free choices whose very freedom may simply be a matter of perspective? I think my head is starting to hurt.

I’ll end this ramble by simply stating that on this re-read there came a point when I was starting to think I might need to adjust my original rating of 4 down to 3, but you have to stick with Hoban no matter how strange and bewildering his guidance may sometimes appear, and as I finished I didn’t think I could give it any less than the 5 stars I think it ultimately deserves. Stick with it and I think this book will pay large dividends.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pilgermann is the iconoclastic story of a German Jew at the time of the first crusade in 1096. Dramatically castrated on the way home after cuckolding the local tax-collector with his wife Sophia (meaning Wisdom), he sets out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

On the way he is accompanied by various spirits of the dead, including the beheaded corpse of the tax collector, the man who castrated him, the sow that ate his severed genitalia, a bear shot full of arrows, and the skeletal manifestation of death itself called Bruder Pfortner (Brother Gateway), who lustfully sodomizes everyone in his path.

Hoban was still primarily a children's writer at the time he wrote Pilgermann, but as you may have guessed by the previous paragraph, this novel is decidedly not for children. Suffused with graphic, violent imagery, heavy on metaphysical concepts and quotes from holy scriptures, it's a wild journey both to and within eternity itself.

Inspired by gazing at the stars between the Virgin and the Lion over the hills of Galilee, Hoban must have been thinking of a way to reconcile the three religions that share and fight over the Holy Land with a single idea of what eternity will be, which Pilgermann finds in a pattern:
"There is a point where pattern becomes motion; the pattern has found me and I must move, must be aware of moving, must be a motion, an action of the Word".

I have read this three times now, the first two times in my early twenties. Although I recommend it and will always have a fondness for it, this time around I detected that it was a little slipshod in places and could have done with some editing, a little less conceptualizing and a little more story.

I still recommend it though.

[Gronk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a young man and wondered whether it'd be as magical today, 30+ years later, as it was then. It is! Hoban's writing is beautiful and dense with ideas. I do not recommend this to others though because it is not a simple story and the topics are not necessarily pleasant - castration, war, death, the nature of humanity and religion. It also is a bit slow near the end. Nevertheless it's a remarkable work.

[Daniel Polansky]

A castrated Jew meets Jesus, joins the first crusade. A spiritual, one might even say mystical novel, about sin and God and meeting God and meeting characters from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. Didn't really do it for me but it certainly demonstrates the man's range.

[death spiral · Rating 4 out of 5]

Circulates somewhere between the hundred or so pages I’ve read of Broch’s The Death of Virgil and late PKD. Not quite my preferred aesthetic mode, but I found the theological questions pressing enough—the narrator, speaking from a Now outside of time and space, is preoccupied with God having become no longer a “He” but an “It.” The conclusions don’t ever get as dark as Ligotti or late Cormac, but it’s close.

[Gayle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was too tired for this level of thinking

[Taşcu Goga · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I don’t know what I am now. A whispering out of the dust. Dried blood on a sword and the sword has crumbled into rust and the wind has blown the rust away but still I am, still I am of the world, still I have something to say, how could it be otherwise, nothing comes to an end, the action never stops, it only changes, the ringing of the steel is sung in the stillness of the stone.” The Pilgermann

[hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

feels dark and difficult and deep (not in bad ways), and I'm reading slowly... :)

[Gingaeru · Rating 1 out of 5]

All I knew beforehand was that a Jewish man copulates with a tax-collector's wife, is castrated by an anti-Semitic mob, rescued by that same tax-collector, and has a "vision of Christ." But this all occurs within the first few pages. If you've read the Bible properly, you'll roll your eyes throughout this novel (if you don't DNF it first), as it's woefully clear the author did not. Words that come to mind in reviewing this book are: ignorant, misguided, disrespectful, blasphemous, pretentious, redundant, and positively delirious. It's redundant in the sense that it could've been half as long without losing anything; the author had the habit of repeating himself (e.g., "Suddenly there came flying towards me with a mouse dangling from its beak an owl, what is called a veiled owl, with a limp mouse dangling from its cryptic heart-shaped face.").

So, this random Jewish guy (Pilgermann) claims to have lived on for centuries after his death as "waves and particles" in owl-form... He narrates his story from 1096, when he committed adultery, to his eventual death in 1098. Evidently, he was a physician, though initially he claims not to remember his former occupation. There are frequent interruptions in the narrative, consisting of the main character's rambling musings. The subjects of which range from the dreams of some pope, to critiques of specific artworks, and his own twisted spiritual confusion.

The creep loiters outside a tax collector's home until he leaves, ascends a ladder to the man's wife, Sofia, and immediately considers her genitals and their subsequent adultery as "holy"... (This is also where the author starts using "thou" in the most annoying way conceivable.) Upon departing from the tax-collector's home, he is sniffed out by a sow, and his testes and phallus are removed and fed to her by a gang of racist out-of-town peasants. They stop short of killing him at the tax-collector's behest. This is the point where things take a turn for the hallucinatory; there's simply no other way to view it. Pilgermann sees and speaks with "Jesus," who, firstly, wouldn't have appeared to him (he's far from being devout, even in Judaism), and secondly, wouldn't deign to utter the refuse that spews from this hallucination's mouth. Besides, the year is 1096; Jesus had long since retired from making appearances. Ultimately, this Pilgermann character decides to travel to Jerusalem (from Germany) for no valid reason. On the way, he apparently kills a man (it wasn't too clear) after stumbling upon the tax collector's mutilated body hanging in the woods. He then meets his victim's partner (another "Sophia"). She explains how the two of them had been murdering pilgrims for their body parts and selling them off as "relics."

Chapters 7 and 8 are completely insane and must be read to be believed. Pilgermann encounters a personified "Death" character, who goes about copulating with everyone in sight (including thirty starving peasant children simultaneously; having multiplied himself for the occasion). He witnesses a man executing a bear by hanging it from a tree, all the while calling said bear his "God." He tries intervening, but "Death" prevents him from doing so. They next stop at an inn, only to find there the very peasant who made him a eunuch and the sow that gobbled up his man-parts. "Death" immediately begins raping the pig, and as he climaxes, Pilgermann slits her throat. "Death" then proceeds to rape the peasant, who dies instantly. Back on the road, Pilgermann walks alongside "Death" and all the deceased people (and animals) he's met along the way. Including the sow, who walks upright, her throat dripping with blood. For some perverse reason, the author chose to write this character as "erotic." (Anyone who's sexually aroused by an undead bipedal pig with a cut and bloodied neck has some serious issues, to say the least.) Everyone wants to have sex with the damned pig, even the main character, who feels the ghost of an erection. "Death" rapes her a second time on the road to Jerusalem as they discuss the sordid life stories of her and her owner/lover. Pilgermann experiences all of this with detached indifference.

He never makes it to Jerusalem. Instead, he's captured by pirates and "sold" to a merchant in Antioch. "Sold" is in quotations because the merchant pays double the asking price, the pirate then gives half of the earnings to Pilgermann, who then "buys back his freedom" by handing the money back to the merchant, and finally, the pirate also returns his half to the merchant because "Allah is watching." Pilgermann and his "purchaser" walk together to the merchant's home as "friends." The merchant then inexplicably commissions Pilgermann to design a geometric pattern to fill a plot of land he had purchased for the sole purpose of tiling it with just such a pattern. Pilgermann draws the pattern almost immediately, and the rest of the book deals with this "Hidden Lion," or "Willing Virgin" pattern being treated as something "profound," and later the Frankish crusaders' siege on the city. One of the last things Pilgermann sees is the headless, bloated tax-collector defecating repeatedly (and dramatically) in an already-overflowing bucket in the corner of his tiny cell... It's laughable and sad that anyone can consider this book to be deep and meaningful. It's also strange that some reviewers confuse the tax collector (in Germany) with the merchant (in Antioch); they're completely distinct, and the tax collector is long-dead by the time the merchant enters the picture.

The following is the only good morsel contained within this horrible and bizarre novel:
"All those ancient mouldering kings entombed with their murdered wives, with their servants and soldiers and horses, with their weapons and chariots, their stone bread, their stony dregs of long-departed wine! Imagine the burial of a mouse with weapons, an ant with concubines! The arrogance, the greed of it!"
...

Uses of "loom" (verb): at least 2
Uses of "here and there": 6+
Uses of "[this] here, [that] there": 2+
Uses of "to and fro": 2
Uses of "ponderous": many
Uses of "tawny": lots
-
Characters "blurt": twice
Characters "shrug": twice
Characters "whirl": once
...

Typos/Grammar Crimes:
"The tents and awnings... was snapping in the wind." (were) (p. 168)
-
"Those walls are not be knocked down..." (to?) (p. 168)
-
"... God knows what stocks and stones they offered to." (In this context, it seems that sticks was the intended word, but perhaps not.) (p. 196)
-
"You're got enough food here for a week." (You've) (p. 230)
...

My edition had an illustrated cover by Rowena (of all artists), depicting what appears to be a left-handed "Death" character riding his horse out of the central tower of the "Hidden Lion" pattern in a wisp of smoke with mountains in the background. An owl flies behind, in addition to the dead sow (her throat dripping blood) and a nude woman (presumably "Sophia"). There are 240 pages, but the story ends on p. 236.
...

2/10

[cee · Rating 3 out of 5]

i mean. on the one hand it's got some very moving meditations on death and patterns, and occasionally has an almost endearing loony bosch-ian quality. on the other hand, the, uh, the ick factor. Our Hero gets his dick cut off and eaten by a pig during a pogrom in the first, like, 10 pages and it gets worse from there; the decision to reread means weighing things like bembel rudzuk's whole deal and pilgermann's inner narrative and the very dark-comedy meeting with christ against things like just a whole lot of maggots and the personification of death sexually assaulting people (and animals). i don't regret reading it but it's one of those things i think i need to take a long time in between rereading. if you don't have time to read it staring really hard at brueghel's triumph of death for a couple hours could probably put you in the same mindspace.

[Riet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik heb dit boek voor het eerst ergens in de 80er jaren gelezen. Het gaat over een Jood, die tijdens een pogrom ergens in Duitsland in 1096 gecastreerd wordt en dan beslist om als pelgrim naar Jerusalem te gaan. Hij komt tot Antiochie, wat in 1098 door de kruisvaarders wordt veroverd en waar iedereen wordt uitgemoord op de bekende wijze. Het verhaal wordt verteld door de overblijfselen - atomen en stofdeeltjes - van Pilgerman vanuit deze tijd. Veel gefilosofeer over het jodendom, de christenen en de Islam en de manier waarop dat met elkaar omgaat. (Ik weet niet of dit boek in deze tijd nog geschreven kon worden). Ik heb de indruk, dat de Islam er nog het beste van af komt, maar dat is relatief. Het verhaal lijkt soms geschreven onder de invloed van LSD of iets dergelijks, maar blijft wel tot het einde boeien.

[Max Berks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read for pleasure and this book is hard, hard work. The story promised everything I was looking for, however the writing style requires your full attention and at times I had to re-read entire pages to make sure I had understood them. At other times I found myself skipping entire pages as the protagonist shared meandering thoughts on philosophy and religion. Not for me I’m afraid - like a kind of slow, painful acid trip.

[Dave Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoban is having to shake off Riddley Walker (is "Jesus Christ how savoury" a deliberate nod to the preceding book?) but, as always, he produces a novel that's nothing like anything else he's written. And, as always, you are in the company of a very interesting mind.

[Grant McDougall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad, but a bit too obtuse, even by Hoban's usual standards. The writing fluctuated between interesting passages that really drew me in to others that were flat and listless.
I've read nine of his other novels and really enjoyed them, but this one was a bit of a struggle, tbh.

[wynny · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5

[Romulo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Eòghann · Rating 3 out of 5]

feallsanachail, cruthachail, car fad às agus neo-gnìomhach

[Dave Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://electrichalibut.blogspot.co.uk...

[Andrew Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the strangest of Hoban's novels (and that is no mean feat!) The story of Pilgermann's life (the latter part of it) and death is told by his enduring presence as waves and particles, with Pilgermann the Owl as an intermediate state of some sort... Set in the years 1096-1098, a time of great conflict in Europe and the near East between Christians and Muslims, Pilgermann who is a Jew, is in the midst of it all, suffering a personal tragedy, creating an artistic/spiritual masterpiece, and meeting his end with the fall of Antioch. Along the way he has a number of picaresque adventures, and spends as much time in the company of the dead (and his own Young Death) as he does with the living.

This is not the most accessible book, but is remarkably haunting. As in all Hoban's novels, the use of language is sometimes idiosyncratic and often extremely powerful, with flashes of comic wisdom in the midst of the carnage and degradation: 'Whenever I think that I ave seen the boundaries of my stupidity there suddenly open up new territories before me,' Pilgermann observes towards the end of the novel.

The whole book is saturated in the religious and cultural atmosphere of the time, with copious references to and quotations from Jewish, Christian and Muslim Scriptures.

In summary: difficult and resonant...

[Denise Schlachtaub · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost quit reading this one because the narration kept moving back and forth between different states of reality, dreams, and other-worldly consciousness, which I found distracting and difficult to keep track of. In the end I was glad that I kept going, though, since there are several passages in the book that were beautifully written, and that offered profound insight.